


Consolation

by Unsentimentalf



Series: Aggravation [4]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M, S&M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-11-21 05:40:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11351019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: "You need to talk to him, Tarrant, to get him out of there."“Me?  I’m the last person he’ll listen to.”“You are the last person,” Dayna said. “Even Vila’s had a go. He’s not replying to any of us. You’re the one with the relationship.  It’s your turn.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have played merry hell with the timelines of S3 in order to give this fic plenty of room. It’s all in order, just greatly elongated.

“Achilles still sulking in his tent?” Tarrant sighed inwardly at the blank faces. Seems that nobody had a classical education these days. 

“If you mean Avon, he’s still in his room. It’s been two days now.” Cally said. “He must be in a terrible state.”

“Who, Avon?” Tarrant shook his head. “He’ll be fine. He’s just embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed?” Dayna demanded, “Why”

“Come on. The Feds send a beautiful woman to spy on him and he falls in love with her and tells her all his plans. Even when he’s arrested he doesn’t figure out that she was behind it. He charges heroically around the galaxy to avenge her and she shows up and tries to kill him in front of us, and not just us either.

“I can’t imagine anything that our Avon would find more humiliating than discovering that he’s screwed his entire life up by falling in love and that Servalan is laughing at him. Don’t fuss, Cally. He’ll come out eventually.”

Cally was staring at him. “How can you be so brutal about it? What it he does himself some injury in there?”

“Who, Avon?” Tarrant said again. “I think you’re massively overestimating his basic humanity, Cally. I grant you that he’s probably extremely pissed off right now but heartbroken? I doubt it.” 

“And what if you’re wrong? You need to talk to him, Tarrant, to get him out of there.” 

“Me? I’m the last person he’ll listen to.”

“You are the last person,” Dayna said. “Even Vila’s had a go. He’s not replying to any of us. You’re the one with the relationship. It’s your turn.”

That ‘relationship’ had terminated some weeks ago, well before the Notre Dame events. Tarrant didn’t feel like trying to explain the details. “I haven’t got anything to say that he’ll listen to.”

“You can usually think of something to say,” Vila chipped in. “You’ve started flirting with him again.” 

That was moreorless true. Tarrant hadn’t been in any particular hurry to convert his teasing into actual physical activity, though. He’d had a seriously unpleasant experience- Cally would no doubt call it traumatising- due to a misunderstanding of Avon’s. He was in no rush to leap into that particular fire again, even if he was rather enjoying basking in the speculative heat.

Again, nothing he intended to explain to anyone else. “Avon will reappear when he chooses, not when any of us beg him to. Leave him alone.” He swept a hand across the controls at his console. “We might as well find ourselves something to do while we wait. Zen, full scan. Report on anything that looks interesting.”

 

The interesting things that Zen had found hit the ship again and it shuddered.

 _Shields down to 46 percent_ Zen droned. 

“Avon!” Cally was yelling, for about the sixth time. “Avon! We’re under attack. We need you and Orac on the flight deck!”

Dayna came running in, gun still holstered. “He’s put some sort of force field up. I can’t get near his door!”

Tarrant ripped the ship around so that what was left of the shielding faced the tiny aggressors now in the process of massing together again. “Vila, did we hit them?”

“They split apart again around the beam. No damage.”

“Shit!” They’d already established that they couldn’t outrun the damn things and now it seemed that they couldn’t destroy them. 

“Tarrant!” Cally’s voice was sharp. “Talk to him!”

“About what? If his own imminent destruction doesn’t interest him, how the hell am I meant to get his attention?”

“I don’t care how. Just do it, Tarrant!”

There was only one thing that Tarrant knew of that had ever made him an object of any interest to Kerr Avon and this so much wasn’t the time or the place. 

“Tarrant!” Cally yelled at him again. “Now!”

“Message to Kerr Avon,” he snapped at Zen. “Roj Blake. And if that’s what it takes to get you out of that damn room I swear that I’m going to kill you myself!”

On the screen the collective of spiky hostile things were massed for another attack and he didn’t have time for anything but doing his best to get as much of Liberator as possible out of the way. 

_Shields down to 35 percent_

 

 _Shields down to 23 percent_

“Vila, stop shooting at them. Zen, ionise the outer shell.” Avon put Orac down on its table. “Patch Orac into your communications and prepare to broadcast its signal.”

With the cessation of firing there was a sudden silence, broken by Cally. “You’re late. What on Auron have you been doing?”

“I was preoccupied,” Avon said calmly. He looked as collected as usual. “Zen, do you have Orac’s signal?”

_The signal is being broadcast now_

“Let’s hope this works,” Avon muttered. “The ionisation won’t hold them for long.”

“What’s Orac saying to them?” Tarrant demanded.

“It’s supposed to be making friends, or the computer equivalent. Wait.”

“We’ve done quite enough waiting for you. Why didn’t you respond to Cally?”

Avon turned to look fully at him. “Well now. If I’d replied to Cally, I would never have received your message, would I? Orac, report.”

**Hostilities have ceased. The Adrumb were aware of the presence of intelligent machine entities on the ship but had wrongly assumed that they were subservient to the biological organisms and therefore morally irrelevant. This misapprehension has now been corrected.**

“Which, for the avoidance of doubt, ” Avon said to the room in general, “was what this biological organism ordered our subservient intelligent machine entity to do. Zen, are our assailants leaving?”

 _Confirmed._ The display showed the tiny robots tracking away rapidly.

Tarrant took a breath, his heart still pounding, “Well, good. We’re not going to die after all. We’d better go dark for a while and get the damage fixed.”

“How long will that take, Zen?” Avon asked.

_Automatic repairs will take 18 hours and six minutes._

“Perfect. Find us somewhere nearby to hide and get started.” Avon strolled to the exit and paused. “My room in thirty minutes, Tarrant,” he said without looking round, and the door slid shut behind him.

“That,” Tarrant said, “is not a heartbroken man. I did tell you.”

“What does Blake have to do with this?” Cally asked him.

“Blake?” For a moment Tarrant was baffled.

“Your message to him was about Blake. What did it mean?”

“Oh, that. No, that was just a shorthand for something else. Something personal, before you ask.”

She frowned at him. “Well, at least he wants to talk to you now. That’s progress. You will be considerate, won’t you, Tarrant? I know you two don’t always get on but he needs a friendly ear right now. He’s far more upset than he pretends.”

Tarrant bit back the first remarks that came to mind. Cally had always been protective of Avon and if she remained wilfully blind to the nature of their relationship, it wasn’t kind or necessary of him to insist that she acknowledge it. “I shall be as gentle as a lamb,” he assured her. 

It was fifteen minutes before Liberator had limped out of the way of the local shipping lanes and the self repair circuits were up and running, allowing Tarrant to finally excuse himself from the flight deck for the brief sanctuary of his own quarters. 

He didn’t have to go. He didn’t have to do anything, he reminded himself. He was under no obligation, no compulsion. He could tell Avon that he’d changed his mind, or even the truth, than he’d just needed to get his attention, and that would be that.

That was the problem, of course. That might be that, permanently. He already knew that Avon had very strong views about safe words. The mere fact that they would all have been killed if Tarrant hadn’t got Avon to come to the flight deck would doubtless not, in Avon’s view, justify Tarrant throwing his around without any intention of following through. 

Fuck it. Ten minutes later he was knocking at Avon’s door.

“If I hadn’t promised Cally that I'd be nice to you, I’d punch you in the face,” he said as Avon opened the door. “What the hell were you playing at? If you’d rather brood in here than help the rest of us fight off an alien attack, that’s your business but Orac doesn’t belong to you and we needed it.”

Avon, wrapped in a black dressing gown, stood back to let him in. “The ship’s intact. You are, quite noisily, alive and well. If you’d swallowed your pride a little earlier then you might have avoided what seems to have been a nasty scare.” 

“My pride? You were the one shut up in here too embarrassed to show your face!” 

“Your pride. The same one that’s brought you here now against your far better judgement, and that’s enough chatter.”

He dimmed the lights a little. In the centre of the room lay a foot long wooden box that Tarrant hadn’t seen before, flanked by a large cushion on either side. Avon shook off the robe and draped it over the back of a chair. Then he knelt down on one of the cushions and seemed to relax.

It was something of a novelty for Tarrant to see Avon naked while he was still dressed, given their usual dynamic. Avon didn’t usually undress until he’d established some degree of control. Not inclined to let the opportunity pass, Tarrant walked around until he could lean against the desk and view the man’s half lidded eyes, and the rest of him, at his leisure. 

He’d missed seeing Avon’s body, missed touching it and having it pressed up against him. Smooth across the shoulders, the chest lightly haired, a still tight stomach and the darker hair down to the partly spread thighs. Between them the cock swelled a little way forward, an indication of interest at least. 

“What’s in the box?” he asked.

Avon regarded him calmly but didn’t respond. 

“All right. I’ll play along, for now, at least.” He undressed under Avon’s intent gaze and settled kneeling on the other cushion. Tarrant was rather pleased to see that the physical manifestation of Avon’s interest was a little more prominent now. This might work out well. 

Avon leaned forward and slid the top off the box. A piece of light fabric was carefully unfolded. Underneath two six inch blades gleamed in the low light. 

Tarrant rocked back a little. Avon knew how he felt about the deliberate application of sharp edges to his skin. It occurred to him that he hadn’t been asked for his safe word. He supposed that his message counted. 

Avon picked up one of the knives and waited, the blade resting lightly on his other hand. 

“You really think so?” Tarrant demanded. Avon said nothing. 

“If you think you can take me in a knife fight, you’re seriously in error.” He picked up the other knife, the smooth bone hilt loose in his hand, poised to react to a lunge or a throw. He could feel his heart beating faster.

For a moment nothing happened. Then Avon drew the blade sharply down his own left forearm. Blood seeped slowly from the cut. 

For the first time in a while Tarrant was reminded that Avon had just killed the woman who he thought had loved him after he had been subjected to torture. Whatever was going on here, it wasn’t likely to be just a mutually amusing precursor to sex. It was difficult to tell how deep the cut was but the blade must be devilishly sharp to cut so cleanly A tiny pool of blood was slowly collecting in the hollow of Avon’s elbow, ignored by the man. 

Tarrant’s objection to playing games with knifes revolved entirely around the ease with which someone else could deliver crippling or lethal damage, accidentally or on purpose. The same knife in his own hands was no danger at all. If Avon though that he could intimidate Tarrant with what was little more than a self administered paper cut he was wrong. 

The edge was remarkably sharp. It cut through his skin with the lightest of pressures, stinging just a little. Along with the pain came the familiar sharp focus, the rush of elation. It felt good. He looked away from the tiny red beads springing up along his arm. Avon was watching the thin line across his skin with a particular intensity that Tarrant hadn’t seem for months. 

Avon didn’t even meet Tarrant’s eyes before he moved, this time a cut across his right thigh, again without sparing it a glance. Tarrant could see the tightening in his expression as the pain hit. Avon wasn’t any sort of masochist. The price he was paying to watch Tarrant bleed was a genuine one. 

Tarrant was still sufficiently annoyed with the way Avon had risked his ship to let him do it. Superficial cut for cut he matched the other man, each flicker of pain leaving him just a little dizzier and more detached from ordinary reality than the last. 

After the sixth Avon’s hand was visibly shaking. He dropped his knife back into the box , hissing slightly as he moved. Tarrant tossed his on top of it. A few of the cuts were bleeding fairly constantly now; nothing that would warrant medical attention but enough to smear red across their skins and to stain the cushions. Tarrant was something of a connoisseur of pain these days. This was nothing. 

Avon seemed to have had enough, though. Her stood up, rather stiffly, and walked into the bedroom. Tarrant followed, smiling. 

The steel cuffs wrapped around the head of the bed were a familiar sight. The second pair wasn’t. Avon sat down on the bed and clipped a cuff over each wrist.

The prospect of wriggling around on the bed with a naked and constrained Avon seemed a remarkable generous reward for a few scratches but Tarrant wasn’t counting his gift horses. He climbed onto the other side of the bed, slid his wrists into the bracelets and clicked them shut. 

Avon laughed aloud as the second cuff snicked closed. Then he pried the cuff around his left wrist open again without difficulty. Tarrant automatically tugged at his own, finding them very definitely locked. 

“Hang on,” he protested, but Avon was already on his feet with his back to him. A second later the bedroom door slammed shut and Tarrant was alone. 

The cuts smarted a great deal more when the adrenalin wore off, and felt as if they would continue to do so for some time.The knife really had been extremely sharp and even with due caution the blade had on several occasions gone deeper than he’d intended. Tarrant tried sending a message to Avon via Zen but he got no response either to that or to just shouting. He considered getting one of the others to come and release him but he really didn’t want any of them to see him like this. Avon would come back, in time.

When Avon finally did he was wrapped in the silk gown again. His bare arms were clean and showed no sign of injury; clearly he’d spent the interim period with the med unit. 

“Are you going to release me or fuck me?” Tarrant demanded. 

“Right now, neither.” Avon walked over to his wardrobe and started to dress. 

“Then why should I stay here?”

“It doesn’t look as if you have left yourself any choice about the matter.”

Tarrant was distinctly irritated. He’d been under the impression that this was going somewhere interesting but now he was yet again the only person tied up and hurting and apparently there wasn’t even any sex on offer. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t safe word you right now.”

Avon just laughed.

Right.. That was it. He was done with this. Avon could damn well come up with a scenario that was a little more fun. “Roj Blake.”

“Duly noted.” Avon said. He picked up a shirt and turned towards his mirror to put it on. 

Tarrant stared at him. “What the hell are you playing at, Avon? You’re the one obsessed by the bloody safe word thing.”

Avon turned his head to smile, tight lipped. “You don’t listen and you apparently can’t reason. I am required under the terms of our arrangement to release you from any situation that I have put you in and to mitigate any injuries that I have caused you. I don’t have to do anything at all about the fact that you have chosen to lock yourself to my bed and bleed all over it.”

“You tricked me!”

“You made some extremely careless choices.” Avon buttoned up the shirt and swung the studded jacket across his shoulders.

Tarrant reined in his temper. He wasn’t in a position to indulge it, now that his usual out turned out not to be an out at all. “So now what? By your own rules it seems that you can’t do anything to me.” 

“Not without your consent, no.”

“And why the hell would I give you that?”

“Because your alternatives are to stay there indefinitely or to give one or more of our companions something to gossip about for the next month. I suggest that you try Vila, by the way. None of the others will get through those cuffs without the key or a laser cutter.”

Tarrant just glared at him.

“Suit yourself. I’m going to get a coffee. Would you like me to bring something back for you? An expert locksmith, perhaps?”

“You cannot keep me locked up in your bedroom, Avon!”

“I’m not keeping you at all. I’ve told you my price for my assistance. You can take my help or ask for someone else’s or stay there, just as you please. I’ll be back in five minutes.” And Avon walked out, the door closing firmly behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

Avon was a few more moments than five, deliberately. There was no risk to Tarrant from his absence; on Liberator no-one was ever entirely alone. On his return with the coffee he settled at his console without a glance at the man chained to the bed. Tarrant’s move now. 

Tarrant remained silent on the bed, waiting for him to bend, or perhaps for some emergency that required Liberator’s pilot to be released That wasn't likely at all. Tarrant had himself put the ship out here in the quiet dark, engines silent while the repairs took place, unpowered drift so minimal that it would take fifty years for the nearest star to get visibly brighter. Nothing should find them out here, and as for internal crises, he had made certain that everyone knew that Tarrant was here and at his specific invitation right now. Come hell or high water no-one would interrupt them unless lives were at stake.

Avon did his best to concentrate on the obscure data sets he'd commanded from Zen. He had been preparing an analysis of what the alien ship's capacities and limitations were, something Zen either couldn't or wouldn't tell him directly. It was painstaking work, often sufficiently beyond his understanding of physics that he had to put the numbers aside and go back to study with no guarantee that the matter was even covered by human knowledge. Still, the data he'd picked up about ionisation of the hull had held off the small nasties for long enough for Orac to befuddle them with that wildly inaccurate information about the relationships of human and computers on board. It was work that had already proved its value. 

Right now he couldn't marshal any attention to the numbers on his console. Seeing the pain in Tarrant's narrowing eyes as blade parted skin at Avon's unspoken prompting was the first time he'd felt anything since the numbness has set in. Since the woman who wasn't Anna had died. 

Tarrant had a right to his silent fury, of course. He'd wanted Tarrant furious. It had been the prospect of all their bloody sympathy that had kept him in his room for days. Tarrant would have been unusually obliging about a more normal approach he suspected, but all out of that fucking sympathy. His desires weren't to be pandered to or play-acted for.

So he'd set up a longstanding mental fantasy that he'd previously been fairly sure would never find an occasion to be put into effect, which just went to show the benefits of being prepared for anything. The scenario hadn't just been mental porn, though it worked well enough for that. He'd thought a great deal about justifications, about how far he could go, knowing that he couldn't trust his instincts when it came to consent and Del Tarrant 

Avon didn't regard himself as fond of Tarrant at all. He felt no desire to ease his pain, to provide support, to reassure or to please., That in itself didn’t matter; it would have been equally acceptable, equally safe, to be cold, to use a partner according to the rules, no more and less. But what he wanted from his arrogant crewmate was neither warmth nor coolness but defiance shading into defeat and he suspected that he didn't really care, viscerally, whether he got that within the boundaries of consent or not.

Tarrant of course should care, having only those rules to protect him from what he must be well aware by now was Avon’s considerable capacity for doing him harm. 

“You’re despicable. You know that, don’t you?” The hour long silence was abruptly broken.

“I did think that you might have become less gullible by this stage in our acquaintance. Clearly I overrated your ability to learn.”

“Is that what this is about? You’re trying to prove that you’re not the only person who can get hoodwinked? Sorry, Avon. This is nothing compared to how you were taken in. I’ve had a couple of hours of discomfort and maybe I’ll have to put up with a few snide comments from Vila. You lost your entire life as well as the fortune you were trying to steal.”

Good. The man was still on the attack. “You’re going for Vila then? I suppose that takes a certain kind of courage. Would you like me to go and fetch him or are you going to risk discussing the matter on the open comm?”

“Bastard,” Tarrant said. “Neither. You can have your tiny little victory tonight. It’s not going to change what happened to you.”

“It was never intended to,” Avon stood up and walked back to the bed, looking down at Tarrant. He could feel his pulse quickening. “What’s your safe word?”

“Are you going to take any notice of it this time?”

“I always do.”

“Roj Blake,” Tarrant said. “And if you don’t tread extremely careful you’re going to be hearing it again very soon. The amount of your usual sadistic crap that I feel obliged to put up with tonight is somewhere around none. "

"My usual sadistic crap?" Avon chose to sound mildly offended. " That's what I get for keeping you educated and entertained?” He picked up the remote and the cuffs sprang open. Tarrant sat up on the bed, rubbing his wrists. 

Avon collected a small bottle and a towel set out on his desk. He sprayed a thin line of foam along his arm, resisting a shiver at the cold, wiped it off with the towel and held out the arm so that Tarrant could see it was unmarked.

“Spray this along each cut, wait twenty seconds and wipe it off.” 

“What’s that?”

“Harmless. Though I suppose it might sting a little.” 

“What does it do?”

“Use it and find out.” 

“Or?”

Avon jerked his head towards the door. “Nothing’s keeping you here any more.” He’d told the man, unambiguously, that it was harmless. If Tarrant wouldn’t co-operate even to that extent then Avon’s careful preparations were just going to have to go to waste. Avon couldn’t throw his weight around, not yet, not with Tarrant quite possibly just looking for the first excuse to throw those (admittedly rather unfairly extracted) safewords right back in his face. 

Tarrant took the spray, sniffed at it, then used it to cover the long clotted scratch on his forearm. He didn’t watch it for the carefully counted seconds, he watched Avon. Avon watched the reddening line of foam. 

Twenty seconds. The towel swept the foam away, leaving clean skin. Fresh red drops started to bead along the line, merging to red tracks that slowly started to trickle across the skin below. Tarrant patted the blood away and it oozed straight back, and again, and again.

“I see, “ Tarrant said calmly, “ And for how long am I supposed to bleed out for your pleasure?”

Avon’s eyes hadn’t moved from the line of red along the arm. “Scratches this shallow? Half an hour, at most. I’m afraid that if you were hoping for genuine sadistic crap you will, for the moment, have to be disappointed.” 

“Anti-coagulant. What else does it have in?”

“Antiseptic.”

“How thoughtful,” Tarrant said mildly. Blood was trickling down the arm, a thin rivulet but persistent. 

“Do the rest.” Avon told him. 

Tarrant didn’t move. “How disappointed would you be if I said no?” he asked.

Avon had been expecting something. Naked and bleeding, it was time- past time- for Del Tarrant to start pushing back. That didn’t mean that he was going to let himself be shoved.

“Zen, play the last message that Del Tarrant sent me.” 

_“Message to Kerr Avon. Roj Blake. And if that’s what it takes to get you out of that damn room I swear that I’m going to kill you myself!”_

“That’s not an answer, “ Tarrant said.

“That’s why you’re not getting an answer.” A reminder of who started this. 

“Would you really have let the ship be destroyed if I hadn’t sent you that?”

“If you wanted to know that you should have waited to find out.” To himself Avon had to admit that he wasn’t sure. He’d been watching the trouble unfold, feeling the ship buckle under the assault, but he’d done nothing. Nothing had seemed worth the effort involved in saving his life. Del Tarrant wasn’t by any means something worth living for but he’d at least felt mildly intrigued as to what he might do with that desperate and unwise message, enough to put off oblivion temporarily at least. 

Tarrant shook his head slightly. “This had better be good,” he said and picked up the spray again.

Avon watched the white foam lines appear on the taut skin and wondered what precisely ‘good’ might mean for Tarrant right now. 

He wasn’t forgetting that the reason that he’d been sleeping alone for the last two months was his mistake, his complacency in the face of all the contrary evidence of assuming that masochist equalled sub and sub meant entirely safe in the hands of any competent and strictly rule-abiding sadist. He’d put Tarrant in such hands and Tarrant had not been sub, Tarrant had been Tarrant and the consequences had not been good for the man at all. 

So while satisfying his partner was seldom very high on Avon’s list of important goals of sex, especially when his partner was as aggravating as Liberator’s pilot, Avon did have to bear in mind that he could be sleeping alone for a great deal longer than the next two months if Tarrant went away too unhappy from this one attempt at re-engagement. Yesterday that would have been just one more thing that Avon didn’t care about. Today he had watched the blood drip down Tarrant’s naked body and he’d found that he really wanted some more of that particular kind of distraction from other matters.

 

Six clear red lines, six stinging tracks across his skin, the cut across his stomach and the one on the right thigh particularly sharp. Tarrant tossed the stained towel to the floor and stood up to let Avon get the full view. There was a good case for saying that he’d been cheated and bullied into this but that didn’t stop his pulse of arousal as Avon took his time, just looking. And after all ‘this’ wasn’t in the grand scheme of things very much at all, just minor scratches that would bleed a little for a short while and the absence of clothes that he would have happily taken off at the slightest provocation anyway. 

It wasn’t about the damage this time, of course, or the endurance. It was about Kerr Avon proving to himself and only incidentally to Tarrant that he had control over everything he came into contact with, that he was still firmly on the heartless bastard side of things and not the victim. 

That wasn’t hard to understand even for Tarrant, who had never in his life aspired to being a heartless bastard as a goal in itself but only, occasionally, as the necessary prelude to winning, which he did care about though not in quite the way that he used to. He wondered if Avon had proved enough to himself yet. Tarrant wanted sex acutely by now, something that had to be obvious to Avon, but that particular happening never ran to his preferred timetable even when Avon wasn’t concerned with making every possible point about who was calling the shots here. 

“Nice,” Avon said finally. “Decorative.”

“You could have achieved exactly the same result with the laser scalpel,” Tarrant pointed out. 

Avon pulled the cylinder out of a drawer behind him and sent it spinning through the air towards Tarrant, who caught it automatically and tossed it aside on the bed.

“See. No emotional reaction to speak of. And I happen to like knives.” 

It was true that the laser scalpel did not concern Tarrant anything like as much as a knife did. Like most of the other devices Avon kept to decorate other people’s skin to his liking with, the damage it caused was controlled and limited. 

“Even when applied to your own precious hide?” Tarrant was probing  
mostly because Avon would expect him to, not because he particularly wanted to undermine the man tonight. Cally had asked him not to be unkind. 

Avon shrugged. “It hurt a little. I might not benefit from your crossed wiring but the result was worth the discomfort.”

“I’d remind you that my wiring’s not as crossed as all that,” Tarrant said. Avon knew perfectly well that Tarrant liked pain, when he liked it at all, in small doses. Avon was remarkably good at mapping out that exact border between enough and too much, when he wanted to. At other times he wasn’t anything like that considerate. 

“I know what I’m doing.” Avon had pulled off his jacket and was, to Tarrant’s relief, undoing his shirt. It must be close on three hours since Tarrant had come into the room and he was achingly conscious of the fact that in all that time Avon hadn’t so much as brushed up against him. Tarrant suspected hat he could, if he had to, get off just on what Avon’s intent gaze was doing to him but he’d much prefer some proper physical contact. 

Undressed, Avon came to stand in front of him. A finger ran across his chest, contact at last. “You are far too trusting, “ he said.

Tarrant thought about pointing out that as far as everything he had read on the subject was concerned he was _meant_ to be able to trust Avon, who in turn was _meant_ to be entirely trustworthy and not to do things like manipulating him into ending up tied up and bleeding and then smugly deny him any recourse. He was fairly sure however that telling Avon he was doing this all wrong would get him nothing but a second gesture towards the unlocked door and that wasn’t what he wanted. So instead he went for what he thought must lie at the heart of all this. 

“You trusted Anna.”

Avon has ceased to move. “A long time ago, perhaps.”

“A few days ago. That’s when you were willing to risk torture and death to avenge her. You must have known that there was a chance that she’d betrayed you, surely?” He was uncomfortably aware that this conversation might also get him thrown out on his ear but he found that he did care about what the woman had done to Avon and how badly he might be taking it. 

“You want this conversation now? Really?” Avon had acquired a raised eyebrow.

“Not really,” Tarrant admitted. “But Cally said that I should provide a friendly ear for your troubles, and it’s not as if you’re likely to cuddle up and talk to me afterwards.” 

“Heavens forbid,” Avon agreed. “Well, you can tell Cally you tried. Mirror.”

The wall panel shimmered into familiar reflectiveness, ceiling to floor, one of the minor modifications that Avon had made to his quarters. Avon came to stand beside him.

“Quite a self portrait,” he said.

Tarrant had to agree that it looked impressive. Patches of white, patches and streaks of bright red and everywhere, body, hands, face, the rust smears of dried blood. Injuries that had barely hurt enough to notice had left him looking as if he’d clawed his way out of pile of bodies after a massacre. 

Avon reached out and wrapped a hand around his arm, nail digging hard into the cut. 

For a moment Tarrant relaxed into the sharp pain, eyes closing, then he opened them again and felt suddenly and appallingly uncomfortable. He loved and simultaneously loathed the idea of standing here in front of the mirror and seeing himself passively take pleasure in being hurt. Crossed wiring was much easier to live with when he was safely restrained and could fight against what was simultaneously turning him on.

Avon had paused, watching him in the mirror with the slightest of frowns. Tarrant shook his head. 

“No,” he said. Not a safeword, just a request that Avon fix this. He really wasn’t sure that he could explain what the problem was, only that the Tarrant of six months ago would have floored Avon by now. 

The nail dug deeper and Tarrant thought that no, of course Avon wouldn’t listen to his concern, that Avon could be confidently relied upon to push further and further at his tolerance until their relationship disintegrated in anger and mutual misunderstandings one more time. He tensed, ready to free himself with what felt to him like a justifiable level of violence, and Avon let go. 

Afterwards Tarrant wasn’t entirely sure whether the pain had stopped before or after the first sound from Dayna on the intercom. Before, he thought, He really did. 

“Avon! Tarrant! Our small friends are back!” 

“Hell,” Tarrant said, and aloud “We’ll both be right up.” He turned to grab his shirt, paused in dismay. 

“Here.” Avon was rummaging in a cupboard. He tossed something to Tarrant; a thick black sleeved tunic. “You might want to clean up the visible bits as well.” 

“No time,” Tarrant was struggling to get leather trousers on past two swollen knife cuts and an erection that wasn’t conveniently going away. 

“Your choice,” Avon was already substantially dressed. “If we survive the next half hour you might regret it,” and he was out of the door and up the corridor while Tarrant was still fighting with his zipper. 

Tarrant glanced at his face in the mirror one last time. He did look like he’d been in a particularly nasty bar fight. Reluctantly he shoved the towel under the tap and then scrubbed as he ran, dropping the messily stained towel as he reached the flight deck. “What have I missed?”


	3. Chapter 3

The main screen showed the now familiar swarm of silver, much closer to the ship than was at all comforting given than a few hours before they had been slamming themselves mindlessly over and over into Liberator's hull. 

Dayna shifted from the pilot’s console as Tarrant came to take his place, moving Vila in turn off the powered up weapons controls. If it came to shooting, Tarrant thought, they’d be unlikely to have any more luck than last time. And this time Avon didn’t seem to have any crisis solving ideas; like the others he was doing nothing but watching Orac flicker at Zen in communication.

**The Adrumb propose a trade,** Orac said finally. **They are offering a composite formula that they claim will improve the ship’s shielding by 1.26 percent. This is highly desirable.**

Tarrant might not have Orac’s over developed sense of personal safety but he had to agree it sounded better than getting beaten up again. “So what might a flotilla of small spiky robots want from us in exchange?” 

**They wish to borrow one of our shuttles containing two of Liberator’s human crew.**

“Borrow us for what?” Avon demanded.

**The translation is somewhat obscure at this point. I believe they intend to observe, or possibly interrogate. Some form of obtaining information was definitely implied.**

“Are you sure they didn’t mean vivisect?” Vila asked. 

Orac hummed. **It is unlikely. The implication was strongly that all the borrowed units would be returned in the same condition.**

“Did they say why they want information about us?” Avon asked. 

. **All rational entities seek information.** Orac sounded impatient. **I fail to see the relevance of the question.**

“It doesn’t make any difference,” Cally said. “We’re not for hire.”

"You'd better tell them the deal's rejected." Tarrant said. "Try to be polite." 

There was another silence, which lengthened. Tarrant tried not to look at Avon. Avon made not looking back at him seem perfectly natural. He probably wasn't even trying, Tarrant thought. Five minutes ago they had been about to fuck for the first time in months but Avon, unlike Tarrant, had doubtless already put that out of mind completely. Cold blooded bastard. The cuts still stung, he could feel the chill damp of blood soaking unseen into the tunic’s black fabric and he felt physically and mentally ragged, all thanks to Kerr Avon. Even so he badly wanted to be back in Avon’s quarters right now, not standing out here.

That was no excuse not to attend to his duties. “Zen. What's the status of the repairs?” 

_Shields at forty three percent. Weapons at twenty one percent. Engines at forty two percent. Current maximum safe speed standard by three._

**It appears that" trade" was a linguistic oversimplification,** Orac stated. **The term they are now using means rather ‘unequal exchange between a superior and inferior force’ and it is not optional. They are giving us approximately eight minutes to comply.**

“We can't fight them off," Tarrant said. “We couldn't beat them or outrun them when we were at full capacity. So what do we do?” 

“I'll go,” Avon said. He held a hand up to the protests. “I can teleport back here at any time. The shuttle's no more dangerous than the ship at the moment. It will give me a chance to study them up close. We're going to need some way to defeat them.”

“They wanted two of us,” Tarrant said quickly, before he could think better of the idea. “I’ll fly the shuttle.” 

* * * * * * * 

The shuttle moved slowly out of the hanger, Tarrant at the controls. Beside him Avon stayed silent until the doors were cleared and they were coasting towards the swarm. 

There was hardly time for conversation but Avon wanted a matter cleared up before they got into further trouble. “I could have piloted it. What was the real reason you volunteered?”

Tarrant’s tone was light. “Well, Vila wasn't going to, and the women need to stay put. There wasn't much choice.” 

“I wasn't aware that you went in for that sort of masculine gallantry.”

Tarrant glanced at him briefly, then back to the controls. “These Adrumb are aggressively hostile without any provocation and they want to know more about us. Providing them with biological data for both sexes struck me as rather more co-operation than necessary, just in case Vila was right about the vivisecting.” 

He paused. "You didn't think I was just following you around, did you?" 

“No,” Avon said flatly. 

“Oh, so you did! Oh dear, Avon. You do tend to rather overestimate your charms.” Tarrant flicked a couple of switches. “Liberator, internal cameras and sound now broadcasting. You should all now have a perfect view of Avon sulking yet again. Our small friends seem to be moving to intercept. Any further word from Orac on their intentions?”

“Nothing,” Cally's voice came back. "We're locked onto your bracelets and can bring you back in seconds.” 

“Don't do it until you absolutely have to." Tarrant reminded her. "Without more information we're all screwed.”

Rather than sulking Avon was watching the swarm approach. As the first few arrived he got a close up view of the oddly shifting points and edges of the metallic carapaces. Then the external cameras darkened as the swarm wrapped itself so densely around the shuttle that no light could be seen. 

Tarrant’s hand was hovering over the engine switch. “Liberator!” he called. “Any clue as to what's happening out there? We can't see a thing.”

“They’ve blocked our view of the shuttle,” Cally said. “We can't see them doing anything but surrounding you yet, and they aren't talking to Orac right now. I think you should teleport back.”

“Not yet,” Avon said. “They're not doing anything overtly aggressive. Tell Orac to send them a simple schematic showing how the airlock operates and confirm when it’s done.”

“Confirmed.” 

Avon leaned over in front of Tarrant to press the button that operated the outside airlock doors. 

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’ve got better things to do with my time than sit here indefinitely. So have you, for that matter.” Avon closed the outer doors and finished the airlock cycle. The internal cameras showed Adrumb flowing out into the corridor, dozens of them. 

Avon swung his chair around, gun in his hand as a precaution, not that it would be much use against the quantity of robots. The airlock idea hadn’t been optimal but he hadn’t wanted the creatures blithely eating their way through the shuttle walls. “Liberator, keep that teleport hot!”

Beside him Tarrant was grumbling, barely audibly, “I really wasn’t in that much of a hurry,” as the things started to swarm in.

They were everywhere, constantly in motion, constantly changing shape and size, the bare metal floor of the shuttle now only visible in a two foot diameter around each man’s feet. The closest creatures had melded somehow and were spinning, faster than the eye could follow; he caught a glimpse of something coming towards both of them and ducked too late. For a second he was blind, deaf and choking and then everything went back to normal.

“Not yet!” he warned Cally. Something had just happened but he felt unharmed. He looked over at Tarrant and froze. The man was as silver as the Adrumb. Avon glanced down at his own hand; silver skin, nails, even the hairs on the back of his hand. He felt no different. 

“What just happened?” Tarrant demanded, staring at him.

Avon reached out to take his hand, running a nail across the back of it. “Look.”

Tarrant pushed the arm of Avon’s borrowed top up, just enough to see the red knifemark show brilliant scarlet against silver skin. He yanked it hard down again “Is it the same all over?”

“Skin, hair and nails, as far as I can see,” Avon said. “Your eyes haven’t changed colour.”

“Nor yours. Is it those things crawling on us?” Tarrant was apparently struggling not to overreact. Avon appreciated that it was a little unsettling but there was nothing to be gained by panic.

“Most likely more like spider silk,” he suggested. “Organic but not alive. They said that they’d observe- it probably transmits biometric information directly back to them. Best to assume it’s harmless.”

“I’m not assuming anything of the sort.” Tarrant scrubbed at the back of his hand, achieving nothing.

Whatever the Adrumb were up to, Avon had his own agenda and they were wasting time. He leant down cautiously to scoop up a robot in both hands. As he lifted it it stopped moving, frozen in a shape that rather resembled a flattened frog. 

“What are you doing?” Tarrant’s voice was still on edge. 

“What I came here to do.” He dug the laser scalpel out of his back pocket and started poking at a joint. 

“Don't annoy them for God's sake!”

“They've shown no capacity for any emotion other than curiosity.” Avon pointed out.

“I noticed plenty of aggression earlier!” 

“The attack on Liberator was not necessarily emotion based. The decision to destroy a ship full of vermin might be a rational one.” 

With some work he should be able to pry the unit apart. “These things are manufactured and apparently identical; I would guess that there won't be a reaction to the destruction of a single unit as long as the swarm isn't at risk.“ A thought struck him. "Of course they may assume we are equally unconcerned about the destruction of an individual. Orac, tell them again and very firmly that you insist on the undamaged return of every single one of your biological units." 

“I'm not undamaged,” Tarrant pointed out. “God knows what this stuff is doing to me. I need that.” 

He snatched the scalpel out of Avon’s hand but it left not a scratch on the silvered skin on the back of his hand. Tarrant increased the depth once and again with no effect.

“Careful,” Avon warned, but Tarrant was determined if not outright frantic. The laser finally cut straight through the silver and his skin and deep into the flesh underneath. Tarrant yelped in pain and dropped the scalpel as blood oozed red and rapidly to the surface. 

“Idiot!” Avon said, picking up the scalpel and reapplying it to the robot. “You’ll have to find something to wrap that up now.” He had no intention of sacrificing his own shirt, not after he’d already let Tarrant bleed all over his second favourite black tunic.

Tarrant wasn’t dealing with the injury himself though; he was standing quite still watching the blood drip down his argent wrist and splash on the shuttle floor. 

Damn. It would be useful if Tarrant could snap back to his usual relaxed and seriously overconfident self round about now but Avon had no immediate ideas about how to make that happen. It was extremely unfortunate that this should take place straight after he'd spent several hours of focussed effort in getting Tarrant to feel both unsettled and vulnerable. He would have said that it would take a great deal to get Liberator's audacious pilot close to falling to pieces but then he'd put the man through a great deal, having been confident in his control of the situation. He couldn't of course have predicted that Tarrant would abruptly need the resilience he'd systematically undermined.

Avon had just started to undo his shirt when Orac’s voice came across the communicator. **They wish you to repeat that. They found the experience very interesting.**

At least that got Tarrant’s attention. “Tell them to sod off,” he snarled in high temper. “I'm not damaging myself for anyone else's entertainment today! "

“Advise them that causing oneself damage is counter to human operational programming,” Avon clarified. 

**Confirmed.**

The seething mass of robots had surged forward to cover the blood on the floor as Tarrant retreated back next to Avon. Avon noticed with concern that the shapes had changed again with sharp edges now predominating. 

**They say that they need to experiment.** Orac said. **They will attempt to avoid permanent damage.**

“That’s it. I’m going to teleport you back,” Cally said. 

“No!” Avon said to both of them. “Orac, tell the Adrumb that the required experiences can be generated and permanent damage avoided but only if they leave it to me. Tell them now!”

**Confirmed.**

Tarrant was staring at him, eyes oddly unreadable in the silver face. “What?”

“If we teleport back now they’d destroy Liberator. I just need enough time to take this thing apart and figure out how to stop it.”

“Time which you’re going to get by taking me apart? Is that it?”

“Don’t exaggerate. They are after sensation, not destruction. Play along for a little while, that’s all.” 

“Play along. “ Tarrant said flatly. “I suppose this must be your idea of paradise; a robot to disassemble and a crewmate to torture simultaneously.” 

“If you have a better plan, I’m listening.”

**They are impatient,** Orac said. 

“All right.” Tarrant said. “All right.” But he sounded as unhappy as Avon had ever heard him, and Avon was fairly sure his mood wasn’t about to improve. 

 

_Frequency detected._ Zen announced. 

About time! It had taken three attempts just to wire the tiny chip from the robot into the shuttle console, yet more delay that Tarrant couldn’t afford. It really hadn’t helped that Avon hadn’t had anything to wipe his hands dry on before the fine soldering. 

“Zen, broadcast static on that frequency with maximum available power until I countermand.”

To his huge relief, three seconds later the seething Adrumb were lying frozen in shape and twitching slightly on the floor. 

“Cally, teleport Tarrant back and get him to the med unit. Vila, Dayna, get the guns firing. We need to destroy them all.”

“What are you doing?” Dayna’s voice came over as Tarrant vanished. 

“Clearing out the shuttle and bringing it back.” He had access to water, electrics and enough insulation from the shuttle walls to keep himself safe while he applied the first two. These robots’ circuits were going to be irredeemably fried before he shoved them back through the airport to be blasted by Liberator’s guns with their fellows. He wasn’t taking any chances.

It was an hour or so later before the shuttle finally came to rest in Liberator’s bay. Avon had stayed in contact with the flight deck but no-one had been exactly chatty. As he strode up past the the med unit he wondered if there had been any success in unsilvering Tarrant while he was being fixed up. If so, he had better find time to have the same treatment once things were settled. 

The answer was obvious as soon as he walked into the flight deck. Tarrant was at the helm, still startlingly metallic and back in one of his favoured piratical shirts, purple this time, presumably picked for contrast. He glanced around as Avon came in but his expression was silver and unreadable.

“Avon. About time. Now you’re back on board we’re moving. Everything around here is dead but we can’t know if they were in touch with friends and relatives so we’re going somewhere else to finish repairs.”

Avon gave a brief nod of acknowledgement. The logic was sound, even if the decision had been made without him. 

Tarrant had his hands on his hips, looking down the flight deck at him. “Orac tells us that the Adrumb sent us partial data about the shielding composite when they entered the shuttle. It’s not complete but I’ve told Orac to shift it to your console in case you can do anything with it.” 

Now that was interesting. The Adrumb had apparently intended to keep their side of the bargain. Avon wondered briefly if perhaps his genocide had been premature. On the other hand he had no idea how much more investigation of human sensation the robots had thought that they’d bought. Maybe it had been best to stop things when he had. “I’ll take a look at it when I have time,” His voice was carefully neutral. 

“Finally you might like to know that the med unit deactivated the transmission element of the silver skin in about fifteen minutes but the metal is apparently bonded to living skin at the molecular level. It will take little under a day in the unit for a full skin graft, or you can wait for it to wear off naturally.”

Given Tarrant’s near hysteric reaction to being covered with the stuff, the fact that he could be having it removed right now but wasn’t was definitely a statement. It seemed that Avon was stuck with it as well, then. 

"I’ll get it deactivated when I go off shift,” he said calmly. He was well aware that Tarrant was playing at being in charge again in front of all the others, a move that he would normally move to flatten heavily as soon as possible but these weren’t precisely normal circumstances. 

Avon let Tarrant decide where to take the ship without comment. After they were settled and repairs were underway, Cally and Dayna successfully persuaded Tarrant to go off shift and get some rest. Nobody tried to do the same to Avon. Nobody really wanted to talk to Avon at all, which in the circumstances he found entirely unsurprising. With nothing necessary to do he declared himself off shift and took himself off to the med unit for the deactivation, then to his quarters for sleep. 

Sleep didn’t come easily. Remembered voices kept interrupting his attempts at calm. Anna’s voice, Tarrant’s, Shrinker’s, the voices of the unknown interrogators that had preceded Shrinker. He didn’t need to be liked, he never had, it didn’t matter what abuse people screamed at him. Anna had lied, had always lied; what she said couldn’t possibly matter. Tarrant had been ridiculously, irrationally emotional given that Avon had been saving both their lives. It didn’t matter, couldn’t matter, but he still heard them. 

In the end he got up to find himself a sleeping tablet. He was about to swallow it when a knock came at the door.

Avon knew that knock. He slipped the tablet back into a drawer and sighed. “Come in.”

For a moment he’d forgotten; the looming silver creature in his doorway made him start. “Aren’t you meant to be sleeping?” he said, rather stupidly.

The figure shrugged and settled in the chair, kicking the knife box out of the way of his feet. It was unlike Tarrant to have nothing to say. Avon thought about waiting him out but he didn’t want the man back in his room for longer than necessary, not tonight.

“Whatever you’ve come to tell me, you can assume that I already know. You were quite explicit at the time.”

Tarrant waved a glittering hand. “Forget all that.”

"Forget it?”

“I’m quite capable of telling whether you’re enjoying yourself or not, Avon. I didn’t really think for a moment that you were doing anything but trying to get us out of there alive. I just...well, it helped to have something to focus on and in the circumstances yelling at you worked pretty well for that. I didn’t mean most of the things I said.”

“And the ones you did mean?” Avon asked, cautiously. 

“Ah. Those I definitely shouldn’t have said in front of the cameras. Sorry.”

Avon curled up on the couch, stretching his shining arm around his knees. “The general mic pickups in the shuttle mysteriously developed a fault just about the time that I decided you were going to be incapable of any discretion. The others got video only, which in the circumstances it seems they found quite disturbing enough.” 

“That's quite a relief. "Tarrant said. “I know nothing's really a secret on board, but what I said... well, it might have been difficult for them to ignore.” 

So Tarrant hadn’t meant what he’d said. Or had he? Avon had been certain enough of his genuine anger at the time- could he really have misread the situation that badly, or was Tarrant lying now, for whatever reason? The damn silver coating made the man’s face almost impossible to read, then and now. It was some consolation to Avon that he must appear equally inscrutable. 

Tarrant stood up. "I'll let you get back to sleep." 

Was that it? It hardly seemed to Avon that anything was resolved but if Tarrant was calling a half to the conversation he had no choice. "Then I'll see you in the morning," he said, carefully pitching his tone at unconcerned. 

"Yes. I'll talk to the others. Explain that it wasn't your fault." 

"Don't bother on my account," Avon said. "They had all the data necessary to come to that conclusion on their own. If they choose to blame me despite all the evidence to the contrary, it's hardly important. " 

Tarrant seemed to be frowning a little at that but it was hard to be sure. He nodded, anyway, and left.

Avon sat staring at the closed door for a couple of minutes but he couldn't get his thoughts into any sort of logical order. He dug out the sleeping tablet again. That would at least be an end to any concerns until the morning.


	4. Chapter 4

“Avon!” Cally repeated. “What do you think?”

“Why not?” Avon said. The point didn’t actually matter. He was more interested in trying to work out whether Tarrant had his hand on Dayna’s arm as the two of them discussed something at her console. Dayna had just shifted slightly and he could see it now, piebald silver and white against her dark skin. She didn’t seem to be objecting. As she laughed Tarrant’s fingers slid up her arm in what was undoubtedly a caress.

“You’re staring at them,“ Cally said. “It’s not really polite.”

“I suppose they’re going to be stupidly distracted,” Avon said. “Neither of them was reliable to start off with.” 

“Both of them are perfectly reliable,” Cally insisted. “And they seem to be very happy. Don’t interfere like you did last time.” She was looking at him sternly. 

As Avon recalled it, last time Tarrant had unexpectedly jumped him, liked what he’d got and promptly left Dayna out in the cold. It seemed unlikely to happen again. He turned back to his panel. “I’m sure they will disappoint each other soon enough without my help.”

 

Having woken up in an unaccustomed bed, Tarrant was having some trouble falling asleep again. Dayna was curled up facing away from him, her steady breathing just audible in the silent room. He thought about waking her but he was fairly sure he was only allowed to stay on sufferance and she was likely to kick him out if he became a nuisance. God knows that he ought to be used to a lack of romance from his partners by now but he'd been rather hoping that Dayna would be a little more acquiescent than last time to cuddles and courtship. Not that the rather athletic sex that was on offer wasn't great fun and at least it carried no more risk of injury than a pulled muscle at worst and that entirely accidental for a change. 

It was good to be in bed with someone. It had been a long time, months even since that aborted 'thing' that Avon tried that definitely didn't count, many more months since the horrific misjudgement with the strangers in the club which counted even less, and before that Avon again. Tarrant didn't really want to think about sex with Avon, not while he was spooning against Dayna's back. It didn't seem polite. Besides, this was undoubtedly better, Avon being essentially just an uncaring sadistic bastard at heart. He closed his eyes again, wrapped his arm a little more firmly around Dayna and eventually he fell asleep again. 

 

In his room Avon undressed, commanded "Mirror," and stood in front of the reflective panel. 

The amount of silver was decreasing almost daily now, uneven patches shining over his usual pale skin. He ran his fingers through his pubic hair, brown most of the way but still argent at the ends like the hair on his head. He had thought about trimming the silver off but while Tarrant still sported glittering curls Avon had been reluctant to be the first to make that move. 

What was left of the silver webbing had little impact now apart from appearance. For the first few weeks there had been a definite decrease in skin sensitivity, most apparent when masturbating which took much longer than usual and which he'd abandoned completely on several occasions. He'd been meaning to enquire whether Tarrant had encountered a similar problem but he supposed that if the man was sleeping with Dayna he must now be functioning adequately. 

Avon reached down to squeeze his half grown erection. This was rather awkward. Last time he'd done this he'd imagined Tarrant on his knees in front of him, shirtless, with his trousers undone and a few light marks along his back, being rather appealingly compliant. A simple enough fantasy and the more convincing because he'd fully expected it to happen at some point. Getting Tarrant back had simply been a matter of waiting for the appropriate moment, some point when he could be sure he wouldn't be turned down. 

Now- he frowned at the reflection of his naked body patched with silver- there was this complication. Obviously he was not going to try to compete with the girl. If Tarrant had had enough of him, very well. After all Avon had been aware all along that he was pushing the man far past his natural preferences for a little bit of pain and a lot more sex. But it did mean that he was hardly in a position to legitimately fantasise about Tarrant giving him oral sex any more. He sighed and went to lie on the bed with some commercial pornography instead.

 

“Is this going to take much longer?” Tarrant’s impatient drawl was spot on, Avon thought. Thoroughly dislikeable and also precisely on cue.

“Not much longer, Sir.” he said, and to the computer technician. “Now cut the power to the shields at the far end of the station.” On the other side of the room Tarrant had gone back to talking to the officer in charge, a tall, lean man called Kivil, about types of Earth whiskey. The poor man had probably barely even touched down on Earth and his pay wouldn’t cover much more than cheap spirits but the sort of posh family Federation officer Tarrant was wouldn’t care about that.

The bracelet in his inside pocket vibrated once, the signal that they’d teleported Dayna out of her cell. “You can turn it on again now,” he said, allowing a little more boredom into his voice. “Then give me the frequency reading for the shielding.”

“Seven four eight eight,” the technician read.

Avon nodded. “The system’s functional now. Sir, we’re done here.”

“About time too.” Tarrant stood up. “Well, thanks for your hospitality,” he said to Kivil without any attempt at sincerity. “We’ll get ourselves out of your way.” The officer started off towards the airlock by Tarrant’s side, Avon following, contemplating the man’s shorn short curls. That had been a wrench for Tarrant, but the silver had had to go. Avon ran a quick hand through his own close cut hair and was just thinking that for once it was all looking like going without a hitch when a group of security officers appeared around the corridor in front of them, guns pointed at them. 

“What’s going on?” Tarrant demanded.

“Sorry Sir,” the lead officer said to Kivil, “but the prisoner’s gone.”

Damn. The gaping hole in their plan had been the possibility that someone would make a manual check on Dayna between her escape and their departure in the stolen Federation ship. 

“What prisoner?” Tarrant asked irritably. “And tell that woman to be more careful where she points that thing. Threatening a superior officer is a court martial offence.”

Oddly enough Kivil seemed to have perked up despite the loss of his prize. “I’m very sorry, Sir,” he said to Tarrant, “But I’ll need to detain you and your technician while our prisoner is recaptured. It seems that the timing of your arrival here is remarkably unfortunate.” There was a hint of smug in his voice. Tarrant had been just a little too superior, Avon thought. 

“Search them,” Kivil told his guards. “With appropriate respect, mind you.”. 

The respect lasted until the guards found the bracelets, Unfortunately they still had Dayna’s to compare them with and after that no amount of Tarrant’s high handed insistence on his faked Federation military credentials was going to help. 

 

“Who are you really?” Kivil asked.

Avon yet again reeled off the details of his assumed identity. He’d been brought out for interrogation from the makeshift cell he shared with Tarrant. It was over-hot in the guardroom and he would happily have killed everyone in the room for a glass of water. He wondered what Liberator was up to and how long they’d take, but mostly how much pain he’d go through before they did. The last time he’d gone through this waiting for Shrinker had been hellish but he’d at least had an out then even if he hadn’t used it. 

His face was sweating but his hands were tied behind his back. Kivil stood up and peered at his perspiring forehead. 

“You’re wearing make up. Why?” 

Because traces of silver on one’s skin tend to raise questions when one is pretending to be an Earth Federation technician. Avon didn’t bother answering. 

“Take him into the shower and scrub him down,” Kivil told the guards. “And the other one, separately.”. 

That was good. The silver skin should at least distract them for a while, Avon thought as he was hustled away, and it had no known connection with Liberator. Also he could grab a few mouthfuls of water in the shower. 

 

“Remarkable,” Kivil said. Avon and Tarrant were both standing naked in the guardroom now, their hands tied and each with a guard at each shoulder. He ran a finger down Avon’s chest, over a patch of metallic skin. “Are you aliens?”

“Just an industrial accident,” Avon said. 

“Was the woman like this?” 

“What woman?” Tarrant asked.

“You’re not going to telling me the truth yet,” Kivil said, without any sign of concern. “It’s lucky that there are two of you. I can torture one of you and the other one can talk.”

“There are very important Federation people who would see killing either of us as definitely overstepping your authority.”Avon said, quite accurately.

“Really? You’re that significant?” Kivil looked between them. “You, I think,” he said to Tarrant. “I didn’t like you from the start and your friend has been more informative.” He turned to Avon’s guards “Take that one back to the cell for now. We’ll talk later.” 

 

It was the third time that Tarrant had been returned to the cell but the first time he wasn’t coming in on his own feet. Avon came forward to catch him as the guards slung him through the door. 

Still conscious. Avon hauled him over to the single bed. If the pattern held they’d drag him out again in about half an hour for another beating. He’d told Avon after the last time that nobody had asked him any questions, they’d just hurt him. Avon was presumably the one who was meant to be talking, and as he looked down on Tarrant’s bloodied face it seemed that he couldn’t afford to delay much longer. Where the hell was Liberator?

After about ten minutes Tarrant opened his eyes and tried to drag himself up. Avon helped him sit with his back to the wall. 

“I’ll have to tell them who we are,” Avon said. “I’ll string it out as long as I can and at least it should win us a bit of time while they report back to Federation Control. How are you feeling?” 

Tarrant shifted a little and winced. “Why does everything we do end with you standing there watching me bleed?”

“This is in no way my fault.” Avon pointed out. Tarrant had been the one who had insisted an hour ago that they should hold out a bit longer. “I told you this whole plan was too risky.”

“You didn’t have a better one. But then you didn’t really want to rescue Dayna at all, did you?”

“I was right. Rescuing her was a mistake,” Avon snapped back. “Now they have two of us instead of one and nobody competent back there to get us out.”

Tarrant seemed to be trying to stagger off the bed. “Fuck you! She’s my girlfriend!”

“Nominally.” Avon said dismissively. “Lie down, idiot. You can’t stand.” As Tarrant went on to prove this by collapsing, Avon scooped him back onto the bed. “I’m going to talk to the guard. If we leave this too long they’ll come for you again.” 

“Wait!” Tarrant hissed at him. “We’ll give the ship another hour.”

Avon turned back. “No. You’re done.”

“Fuck’s sake, Avon! You of all people should know damn well how much I can take.” Tarrant scowled at him, hard eyes in red swollen skin. “I let you do it, remember. That bloody torture, because you wanted to get to Shrinker. Don’t you dare pull me out of this now!”

“That got me what I needed. This is getting us nothing but time that we can’t use.” He stood over Tarrant. “You’re right, I do know what you can take and I can see how this is escalating. I’m calling it now.” 

“There's a good chance the Fed standing orders are to execute us on sight. Liberator's out there. We have a significantly better chance of survival if we wait.” Tarrant glared at Avon. “I'm not going to get shot unnecessarily because you think you have the right to step in and bloody well protect me, Kerr Avon. Not after everything you've done.” 

“Deciding where this stops is what I've always done, and I'm telling you, in my professional opinion as an expert sadist if you like, that you can't safely take another beating like that. They might easily kill you outright, they will probably seriously damage you and they will certainly cause more pain than you will be able to tolerate, and an hour later we'll be in the same position as we are now.”

“That's my decision. Nothing to do with you.” 

“Wrong. You may not think that we’re involved any longer but it takes more than a few weeks of watching you pretending to enjoy screwing someone else to change some things.” 

He walked over to the door without looking back, hammered on it, called through. "Tell Kivil that if he'll provide medical treatment for my colleague I'll tell him everything he wants to know." 

There was a heartfelt "Fuck you, bastard!" from behind him but he paid it no mind. He'd heard it plenty of times before. 

 

"Liberator? Really?" Kivil looked delighted. "So you'd be Kerr Avon, then?" 

"Yes." 

"Oh my! Tell me, is Roj Blake really dead?" 

A Blake enthusiast. Wonderful. "As far as I know." 

"Who's your friend then? The pilot? Tarrand, is it?" 

"Del Tarrant." Avon confirmed. 

"Obnoxious bastard," Kivil said cheerfully. "I suppose it's a good job he got under my skin though. I could have been facing a firing squad myself if I'd just let you pull that stunt with the shielding and leave. Liberator, huh. On my station. Excellent. Will he pull though?" 

"I'm told so," Avon said cautiously. "What happens now?" 

“Now,". Kivil said, smiling, "I set a trap for your ship. I'll probably need your help for that one. Fortunately I still have your Del Tarrant alive to keep you honest."

This man really was far too ambitious for his current post. Any ordinary station commander would have been satisfied with keeping their two prisoners under close guard until they could be collected by senior Federation military. 

Kivil wanted Liberator, Avon suspected not just because of the kudos but because it had been Blake's ship. This was an opportunity, in that it was likely that he'd hold off reporting their presence, but Avon was aware that he was dealing with someone who was still quite prepared to beat Tarrant to death to obtain his cooperation, and now with Liberator herself at stake there might come a time when Avon might have to let him do it. 

Except that option wasn’t open to him now. Avon watched Kivil reviewing the Federation’s records on Liberator, cursing inwardly. Why the hell had he insisted on taking responsibility for Tarrant’s survival when their relationship was completely defunct? Of all the times to declare that Tarrant’s welfare was still his personal concern, this had to be the worst. Avon didn’t know if anything he could do would keep his pilot from further harm, yet because of what he’d rashly declared and what he’d done he now had absolutely no choice but to try.


	5. Chapter 5

It was rather difficult to stay really angry about the fact that no-one was hitting him but Tarrant did his best. It did help that when he’d been hustled, still naked and bleeding, into the station control room Avon had glanced up at him for a second and gone straight back to his discussion with Kivil.

It also helped that Avon not only had his clothes back but a mug of coffee in his hand. No-one was offering anything to Tarrant. He suspected that he was here just to be a symbol of the station commander’s leverage over Avon, whose abject submission to that leverage was not only humiliating but would doubtless lead to both of them being executed rather earlier than necessary. What the hell had Avon been thinking, surrendering so unnecessarily early? Surely not Tarrant’s feelings? That would have been a first.

The only person paying any attention to him was the guard with whom he had become quite closely acquainted over the last few hours. The man’s name was Prius, he was thirty one years old, he had a wife and two small children back on Earth, he had been assigned to the Exrem station for the last two years and he took a size 9 boot, the marks of which had been imprinted at various places on Tarrant’s still naked body. Still, as Prius cheerfully assured him, he was only doing his job. 

What Avon might be doing- that was a mystery. If Avon had revealed their identities then Tarrant couldn’t see why they wouldn’t both be locked safely up waiting for collection by Federation Command. If Avon hadn’t told Kivil who they were, how had he dissuaded the man from continuing with the beatings?

For a few minutes he tried to work out what they were saying but they were far enough away and talking in low voices. He was close enough to smell the coffee though, and his annoyance was rapidly overcoming caution. 

“Arcan!” he called, the pseudonym they’d agreed on. 

Avon turned to look at him again. “You might find him a chair,” he suggested to Kivil. “And some painkillers.” 

Something to collapse into and something to dull the pain sounded just about wonderful right now, which annoyed Tarrant even more. “Fuck that,” he called over. “How about you tell me what the hell you’re conspiring about over there? And where are my sodding clothes?”

“Get him the chair,” Kivil said to Prius, who moved to find one.

“Arcan!” Tarrant insisted. “What’s going on?”

Avon took the chair from the guard and came over to set it down in front of Tarrant. “I’ve got this,” he said in a calm voice which must have been clearly audible to Kivil. “All you need to do is sit down and stay out of trouble.” 

Tarrant bit back his first response to that. He supposed that it was remotely possible that Avon did have things under control, and that, not knowing what was happening, he was risking screwing everything up. Dark eyes watched him, waiting for his response. He sat down.

“Good,” Avon said and went back to his discussions.

About ten minutes later Avon stood up straight. “Now.” he said.

“What about him?” Kivil nodded at Tarrant.

“He’ll keep quiet,” Avon said. 

“He’d better. I could silence him.”

“Not necessary.” Avon turned to the console. “Tarrant will do what he’s told. Opening communications.”

Do what he’s told? All that time together and that’s what Avon had taken away from it? Tarrant was almost too busy bridling to miss the message.

“Liberator, this is Kerr Avon on the Extren Space Station. Respond on this frequency please.”

“Avon!” Dayna’s voice came through after a few seconds. “Are you all right? Is Tarrant there?”

“He’s fine,” Avon said dismissively, without looking at him. 

“Why aren’t you using the bracelets?”

“Because I don’t have them. Things here are a little complicated.” 

“Oh,” Dayna said. “Do you want me to teleport to you with some?”

“Brilliant.” Avon said coldly. “You have no idea who’s here or what the situation is. I might well be talking to you with a gun to my head, and you want to waltz over here and provide another hostage?”

“So what do you want me to do?” Dayna said crossly.

“Where are the other two?”

“Cally’s here. Vila’s asleep.”

“Go and wake him up. And leave the frequency open until you get back.”

Kivil was scowling at Avon but his voice was low. “Why did you stop her teleporting over?”

Avon put his hand over the microphone. “Dayna’s not the one we need. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.” 

“What are you doing?” Tarrant demanded. “And what’s in it for him?”

Avon glanced at him briefly. “Please keep quiet. You don’t know what’s going on.” 

Please? As far as Tarrant could recall he had never once heard that word before from Avon, who had turned back to watch the screen, his still- silvered forefinger tapping impatiently on the microphone.

When Tarrant finally heard Vila’s voice Avon stood up. “Listen carefully, all of you,” he said into the mike. “If Liberator is attacked you’re to remember what we’ve done before but don’t throw away an advantage too soon. Otherwise you’re to wait for my instructions, and do nothing else. Do not come over here or teleport any one on board Liberator without my express instruction. The people I’m with are not our allies and I have some negotiations to carry out.” He clicked the comms off.

“We had an agreement!” Kivil said. His gun was pointing at Avon. “That wasn’t it.”

“We did indeed,” Avon agreed. “That’s how I got a communication channel open. Now Liberator is standing off and if you want her it’s time to renegotiate.” 

“I still have your crewmate, “ Kivil snarled. 

“Yes, Tarrant was very useful. He gave me a perfect excuse to capitulate. But if your plan was to continue to rely on torturing him to make me behave you should probably have checked whether I actually give a flying fuck about him first. Which, in case you haven’t worked it out yet, I don’t.”

“I’ll rip him apart in front of you!”

“And I’m sure I’ll enjoy the show, but right now I have more important things to deal with. You want Liberator. I can give her and everyone on her to you, if you give me what I want.”

That, Tarrant thought, was presumably his cue. 

Swearing at Avon was hardly a novelty; he didn’t even need to think of new invective. He just had to make it look heartfelt, and that wasn’t difficult either. “You’re despicable. You know that?” he snarled across the room as his guard restrained him. “You fucking sadist! This is all about saving your own precious hide!”

“I’ve heard it all before,” Avon told him dismissively. Tarrant could see the slight quirk of his mouth and he knew they were on the same page. He threw in a few more choice phrases just to get the man back for that bloody “please” which he supposed had been meant to be his warning that something like this was about to happen. Eventually Prius thumped him into silence and he lay on the floor pretending to be stunned and wondering what was going to happen next. 

“Half a million and the ship I came here on,” Avon said. 

“Don;t be ridiculous,” Kivil was still scowling.

“It’s a reasonable amount. You’ll get that much reward for his body alone, twice that if you manage not to kill him.” Avon gestured at Tarrant. His flat hand ended up jerking a very little bit downwards- stay put and keep quiet. “And you’re getting a great deal more than that,”

“I could just hand you both over,” Kivil pointed out. “No risk, just the reward.”

“There’s no risk to you in this,” Avon said, “and the reward is much larger. Liberator and four crew. That’s four high profile rebels and the fastest ship in the Galaxy, and you’ll be the one that gets all the credit. Imagine what that will do to your career, Commander Kivil. And all you have to do is give me what I need to survive out there, and that’s half a million, that ship and a signed pass to get me out of this sector.”

Tarrant listened, eyes almost shut. Avon was wordier than usual, he though. Stalling. He couldn’t figure out what for, though. He listened to the bickering that followed. Avon was still holding out the promise of co-operation without actually advancing the negotiation. It wouldn’t work forever though.

“Sir!” Someone came flying through the door. “There’s something on the scans. Not the ship, something else.”

Tarrant saw Avon straighten a little. This must be what he was waiting for but he said nothing. 

“Put it on the screen,” Kivil ordered. “Shields up and if it doesn’t identify itself shoot whatever it is down!”

Tarrant couldn’t see the screen from where he was lying but he could see Avon watching it in silence.

“We’re doing no damage. It’s not stopping!”

A few seconds later the station shook slightly from impact. “Damage to shielding 6 percent!”

“What the hell is it?” Kivil demanded of the room.

“They’re called the Adrumb, “ Avon said coolly. “And they will take down your shields in under fifteen minutes. After that they’ll tear straight through the station walls and you’ll die of decompression within another minute or so. There’s nothing on this station that can even slow them down.”

“Can you stop them?”

“If I couldn’t I wouldn’t have summoned them here. The game has changed again, Kivil. Now you’re negotiating for your life. You’ll be pleased to hear I no longer want any of your money, though, just our bracelets back.” 

Kivil did not appear to be pleased. The gun wavered but as the Adrumb attacked again he seemed to have just enough self preservation not to shoot Avon. “You won’t let those things destroy the station, not while you’re on it.”

“Have you any idea what the Federation will do to me if I’m captured?” Avon said. “I’ll settle for a quick death and the destruction of a military station to my credit if you don’t let me go. And it’s going to be quick. Bracelets.”

“If I give you those you’ll teleport off and leave us to die.” 

“Give one to Tarrant, “Avon said. “When he’s off this ship, then I’ll tell you how to call them off.”

“I thought you said you didn’t give a fuck about him.” Kivil grumbled.

“A pilot’s always useful to have around.” Avon said.

Tarrant struggled to his feet, taking the bracelet and slipping it around his wrist. “I’m not going without you.”

“Yes you are,” Avon said. “You’re injured, you’re still potential leverage and you’re a complication. I don’t want you here, I do need you to take control on Liberator. The others don’t know enough about the situation.” He strode over and seized Tarrant’s wrist. “Liberator! Teleport now!”

Tarrant could feel the teleport take hold. “Get back to us!” he told Avon, as the room dissolved.

“Del! Gods. you’re hurt!” Dayna rushed over from the console to catch him as he staggered off the pad. “I’ll get you to the med unit.”

He pushed her away, maybe a little harder than he’d intended but moving at all hurt. “It’s just bruises. Get back by the teleport! Avon could call in at any moment and he’s in a lot of trouble over there.”

Dayna hovered between him and the teleport console. “You can’t get to the med unit on your own.”

“That’s not where I’m going.” He set off towards the door, hissing at every step. “Stay at the teleport controls please, Dayna! Zen, damage update.”

_Shields down to eighty seven percent._

That was a lot less bad than he’d expected. He made his way along the corridor, leaving bloody marks on the walls where he stumbled against them. Clothes would have been nice right now but he didn’t have time to find any. 

“Tarrant!” Cally caught sight of him at the entrance to the flight deck. She ran over to him, Vila behind . Tarrant no longer had the strength to push anyone away; he let them help him to the couch.

“What’s happening?” he demanded.

“Transmitting the blocking frequency at very low power is making them leave us alone but the station's getting hammered. We need to destroy the lot of them.”Cally said.

“Not yet,” Tarrant insisted. “Avon's counting on them. Zen, can we monitor the state of the station shields?”

_Accuracy requires closer proximity._

“Then we’ll go closer. Help me up.”

“You can't pilot the ship in the state you're in.” Cally insisted. “What happened?”

“Someone liked Avon more than they liked me.” Tarrant struggled to his feet. “I can manage. It's all superficial damage, unlike the blaster fire Avon's going to get to the back of his head if we screw this up.” 

They helped him to his console and found him a chair to sit on. Taking the ship close would have been risky if the station had been in a state to fire on them but the Adrumb were keeping it fully occupied. 

“Cally, keep watch on the station shielding. As soon as it goes below ten percent, increase the static until all the Adrumb stop moving and keep them that way. Zen, give me a schematic of the station on the main screen.”

Tarrant indicated the main weapons arrays. “Vila, once the Adrumb are neutralised you're going to use the plasma cannon to blast through the remaining shields and take out these two areas. If we're precise enough life support to the station control area should be unaffected.” 

“What if they've moved him?” Vila asked.

“Then he's unlucky. I don't think they will have, though. Dayna!” he called through to the teleport room. “We're going to fire on the station. Hopefully this will force them to let Avon go. Patch any communications from his bracelet through to the flight deck and be ready to pull him out as soon as you hear from him.” 

“Shields at nine percent,” Cally called out. “Taking the Adrumb out now.” 

Tarrant brought the ship in closer to where the metallic cloud was already starting to disperse. “Now, Vila!” 

The plasma cannon fired and the shield around the station glimmered red. A second shot and Cally called out “Shields down!” 

“Take the weapons out now!” Tarrant brought the ship round again and the cannon fired twice more. 

“All weapons down,” Cally confirmed. “Video message coming through from the station.” 

Tarrant put it on the main screen. 

"Cease firing or your friend will die." Kivil snarled. Tarrant could see Avon on his knees beside the man, a gun at his head. He looked up at the screen with a total absence of readable expression.

"Kill Avon and the next blast will take out your life support,” Tarrant countered. “Your shields are gone, your weapons are gone, the Adrumb are only temporarily neutralised.The only way you get out of this alive is to give him his bracelet back.” 

No-one moved. Tarrant gritted his teeth, “As a gesture of good will I'm going to tell you that we're going to hit your shuttle bay next. You have ninety seconds to get your personnel out of the area. Transmission out.” He cut the comms. 

“Will this work?” Cally asked.

“It has to. What else can we hit in that place without jeopardising life support to control?” 

“Crew quarters?” Vila suggested. “Communications? But they can't surrender without communications.” 

“By then we’ll have said all we need to.” Tarrant said grimly. “And they don’t need to talk, just to give Avon his bracelet back. Twenty seconds left. Kivil won't care about crew quarters but he needs comms to get rescued.” 

“They're trying to open a channel,” Cally said.

“Ignore them. Let's take out their shuttles before we talk.” 

As the shuttle bath exploded into space in a huge yellow flame Tarrant reopened comms. 

Shit. Avon was lying face down on the floor. If they'd killed him... 

“You are going to put a bracelet on his wrist in the next twenty seconds,” he told Kivil, “or we take out your communications array. Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen...” 

“I'll kill him!” Kivil yelled at him. 

So he wasn’t dead already. “And everyone on your station will die.” Tarrant said. He switched his attention to Prius, standing over Avon and staring at the screen. “Prius, you want to keep yourself and your comrades alive? Want to see your family again? Get this idiot out of the way and put the bracelet on Avon. Eleven. Ten. Nine. Can you see any other way of coming out of this alive? Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Vila, fire!” 

The channel went dead. Tarrant waited, an agonisingly slow ten seconds, fifteen, twenty... 

“Got him!” Dayna called. “He's just about conscious. Need some help getting him to the med unit!”

Cally was already running. Tarrant breathed a huge sigh of relief. He'd had run down there himself but he suspected that he was way past walking. Gods, everything hurt!

“Kill the Adrumb,” he told Vila. “Don't miss a single one.” 

“What about the station?” Vila asked.

What indeed. He'd had every intention of blowing it to smithereens once Avon was recovered. They'd hurt him a great deal and they'd hurt Avon. But this didn’t feel like a combat decision any more, not with them unarmed, unshielded and without communications.

“It's not going anywhere.” he said. “Just clear out the Adrumb for now.” With nothing shooting at them Vila could work with Zen's autopilot. Tarrant folded his arms on the console, put his head down and closed his eyes. Everything was agony now. He really hoped that Avon wouldn’t need the med unit for long.

It felt a long time later when a hand was shaking him conscious again. “You’ll want to see this,” Avon’s voice said.

Tarrant squinted blurrily at the screen. At first he couldn’t figure out what he was looking at. Then the object rotated further and he could see the commander’s red stripe on the grey uniform. 

“Are you sure it’s him?” The face was blackened by vacuum exposure. 

“Yes,” Avon said.

“They put a beacon on it,” Cally said. “They wanted to be sure that we saw it.” 

“What about the Adrumb?” Tarrant asked

“Destroyed. “ Vila confirmed.

“Right. Incinerate that and let’s get out of here”.

“Wait,” Cally protested. “That’s a Federation military base.We’re not just going to leave it there?”

“That body out there is as clear a surrender as a base without communications can provide,” Tarrant said. “We can’t fire on them after that.”

“Like hell we can’t,” Dayna said. “You weren’t the only person maltreated in there, and it wasn’t all on the commander’s orders either. We should exterminate the lot of them. We’re at war.”

“Vila?” Tarrant asked.

Vila shrugged. “I was always told it was wrong to shoot sitting ducks but nobody said what you should do if they were evil ducks. I think you three should decide. You’re the ones who know what it was like down there.”

"The propaganda value to us is worth far more than a few dozen soldiers dead." Avon said. "With no survivors who’s going to credit us? It's heavily structurally compromised anyway; I doubt if it can be repaired, only abandoned. Let the Feds turn up and find out what happened. The story can only enhance our reputation." 

"I don't want credit," Dayna said." I want justice. "

"Then you're on the wrong ship," Avon said. "And probably in the wrong universe."

"You got your revenge!" she snapped at him. "We helped you, remember! Why don’t I get my turn? One plasma bolt is all it will take.”

“They’re just ordinary soldiers,” Tarrant said, thinking of Prius. “I’ve no problem with fighting them but cold blooded execution is a bit rough.”

Dayna was staring at him in apparent shock. “Ordinary soldiers? Is that the sort of thing you did to prisoners when you were in the military?”

“Come on, they weren’t that bad,” Tarrant said. Nothing had been broken, after all, though he hurt like hell. “They are soldiers, what do you expect?”

“Don’t you dare tell me they weren’t that bad,” she hissed at him. “You don’t even know what they did to me, do you? You didn’t bother to ask and you’re still not asking!”

Dayna... She'd been the prisoner of Kivil for the best part of a day and he hadn't even thought about what might have happened to her. “What did they do?” 

“It’s too late to ask now. I want justice but between you and the sadist you're hung up on it's clear that I'm not going to get it.” She turned and walked out. 

“Shit!” Tarrant said. He had to go after her. He pushed himself to his feet and managed a couple of seconds upright before everything went black.


	6. Chapter 6

Five hours after Tarrant was placed unconscious into the med unit Liberator was far away from the still just about habitable station. 

Avon didn’t really care one way or the other about the fate of the soldiers but if Tarrant felt obliged to commit murder to appease Dayna there would be consequences down the line, and if Tarrant refused there would clearly also be consequences. Best to remove the choice and let Dayna blame him instead, once she emerged from her room.

The rest of them had been sleeping on the flight deck sofa in shifts but Avon was still dog tired and not inclined to answer difficult and irrelevant questions, even with a fresh mug of coffee in his hand.

“But how did you know there were Adrumb were still out there? And how could you be sure they’d respond to your frequency and that they’d be close enough to get there in time?” 

Avon took a sip of coffee to avoid the bother of responding to Cally.

“He finessed it,” Tarrant’s voice came from the doorway. “Didn’t you, Avon?” He looked healed but not much rested, Avon thought.

“Occasionally there is no alternative,” Avon admitted. 

“What’s finessing?” Cally asked.

“Ask Vila. It’s his area of expertise. Has anyone seen Dayna?” Tarrant demanded.

“No,” they all said. 

“Right.” Tarrant headed off not looking too happy in the direction of her private quarters.

“Sometimes,” Vila explained earnestly, “the only chance you have to win depends on a missing card being in one particular place. Amateurs have a habit of just playing as if that card is in the most probable place and then they lose whether it’s there or not. Real gamblers know that the only way to win is to finesse- to play as if that card is in the one place where they need it to be, however unlikely that is.”

He looked over at Avon who was still looking after where Tarrant had disappeared. “Getting into a position where you need a finesse to win is usually a bad idea, but at least if you know how to play it you have a chance.”

“So you didn’t know they were out there,” Cally said. “You just hoped.” 

“He did more than that,” Vila said. “He set up the trick so that if they were out there he’d win. That’s the whole point of a finesse. Any fool can just hope something will turn up to save them.” 

“And I am not any fool,” Avon said. “With Tarrant returned to the land of the living you two might as well go off shift.”

“What about you?” Cally asked.

Avon didn’t intend to let Tarrant and Dayna turn the ship around in his absence. “I’ll sleep later.”

She frowned at him. “Make sure you do.” 

Alone on the flight deck, Avon sat down on the sofa and closed his eyes. 

He felt despite Vila's praise that he hadn't played the finesse well. Kivil, selfish and cunning himself, had never been convinced that Avon would let the Adrumb destroy the station whilst he was still aboard. Kivil had of course been right. Avon had been about to give him the information that would have allowed the Feds to stop the attack when Liberator had broadcast the disruption signal. 

After that it had been Tarrant who had called all the shots and despite the physical mess he’d been in he'd called them perfectly. All Avon had done was get hit over the back of the head with a gun and then get hustled into the med unit ahead of the considerably more seriously hurt pilot. It wasn't in Avon's nature to feel ashamed of himself but when he'd seen Tarrant collapsed over the flight deck console from where he'd saved Avon's life he certainly hadn't felt particularly triumphant. 

Nor did Tarrant, it appeared. Unfairly in Avon's opinion; if someone was clearly physically fit and functional, stopping in the middle of an emergency to ask them if anything bad had happened to them recently was not how a man with military experience like Tarrant would operate mid-crisis. And after all Tarrant had been concerned enough about Dayna's well being to insist on the highly flawed rescue attempt in the first place. Still, Tarrant's relationship with his girlfriend wasn’t Avon's concern. 

“Zen. Wake me up on normal alerts or if anyone tries to change course or speed.” 

_Confirmed._

 

He woke slowly, blinking away the sleep in his eyes in the bright light of the flight deck. A familiar voice was talking quietly to Zen. “Tarrant?”

“Hello.” Tarrant said.

Avon pulled himself up and checked the time. He’d slept for about four hours and felt just about human again. “Anything happened?”

“Depends on what you count as anything,” Tarrant said. “The ship’s fully repaired. We’re still heading towards Alpha Nova at standard by seven. The others are asleep, I imagine.” 

That lot wasn’t what anyone would count as ‘anything’, Avon thought. “What else?”

“Dayna and I talked,” Tarrant said.

“So what happened to her?” Avon supposed that he ought not to be the only person on board not to know. 

“She was roughed up by the guards. More than you were, rather less than me, from her account but it’s the first time in her life that she’s ever been systematically hurt and not in a position to fight back. We both know how that feels. She’s angry, and with good reason, but she says that she’s OK.” 

Tarrant pause before continuing “But she had some valid criticisms about me. Quite a lot of criticisms, actually. It’s safe to say that we’re not any sort of item any more.” 

“Thankfully not my business,” Avon started to check the routine reports at his console. 

“You should maybe hear what Dayna has to say about that,” Tarrant said. 

Avon lifted his head. “And what does that mean?”

“Come on,” Tarrant said. “If it’s obvious to everyone else I hardly think it’s likely to have escaped your notice.” 

“If what is obvious?” Avon said irritably. 

“Well, as Dayna put it, if it had been anyone else trapped on that station I’d have stopped long enough to put some trousers on before blowing the place apart.” 

“Would you really?” Avon asked, genuinely curious.

“Dealing with the Adrumb was a matter of urgency, and once they’d stopped attacking we were theoretically vulnerable to the station’s weapons fire, so I probably wouldn’t have stopped to dress before then. But once we’d taken the weapons out there really wasn’t that much of a rush,” Tarrant said. “It might have been better to take our time between hits, let Kivil fester, give his people time to think about turning against him. Even put some clothes on.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“I wanted you out of that situation far too desperately to be strategic about it.” Tarrant sighed. “It was clear enough what Kivil was like. He was going to hate losing and he was just about bad tempered enough to turn that anger on his unarmed captive even if you were his only card. He was the last sort of person I wanted to be negotiating with for your life. I just wanted it done and you safe back on board. And for the avoidance of doubt that’s specifically _you_ safe on board, Avon. I’d have done my absolute best for any of them, of course, but Dayna’s right about not doing it naked.” 

After that little speech Tarrant was watching him expectantly. What did he think he was going to get? Avon wondered. A corresponding declaration of passion? The man was all of an hour and a half out of his last relationship and they’d crashed and burned often enough already. That Tarrant was still hung up on him wasn’t any practical use to Avon, not while what the man wanted and what he wanted still diverged so markedly. 

“Next time be a little less desperate and a little more rational. Your hysteria could have got me killed. Zen, I’m going off shift. Keep to this speed and course, standard alerts.”

As he got to the door Tarrant spoke. “I’m Liberator’s pilot.” His voice was sharp. 

Avon glanced up at him standing at the top console, then walked out.

 

A row on Liberator at the moment was hardly novel, Tarrant thought, though a row not involving himself seemed to be rarer. He stopped briefly outside the door to the flight deck in case they were talking about him.

“Gutless inanity,” Cally snapped. “Isn’t that what you said about my people because they wouldn’t get involved?”

“I wasn’t promoting mindless suicide as the alternative,” Avon said. “Throwing away our lives and our ship achieves nothing.” 

“We’re achieving nothing now!” Cally retorted. “Apart from your personal vengeance and Tarrant’s attempts at piracy, what have we actually done since we lost Blake? Bump into things and survive them, that’s all. The Federation must be laughing at us. They certainly don’t have any reason to fear us.”

Tarrant thought that he was unlikely to hear anything enlightening about himself from this particular conversation so he went to join them. 

“I’ve been working,” Avon said. “And making progress with duplicating features of both Zen and Orac. Dayna has her weapons development. Vila has his drinking. Maybe you should find yourself an occupation if you’re bored.”

“I chose my occupation,” Cally glared at him. “Fighting the Federation. Dayna wants to do the same; she has her father to avenge. Tarrant...” she looked over at him. “Well, I don’t know what Tarrant wants to do but I imagine he’s finding doing nothing tedious by now.”

Tedium was just one of the frustrating emotions that Tarrant was dealing with on a daily basis. He was not a fan of the status quo, certainly, and said so. 

Avon gave him a withering look. “It’s not my job to entertain you.” 

“More’s the pity.” And that probably shouldn’t have sounded so heartfelt but he really was bored. 

Avon didn’t seem to think that was worth replying to. He turned back to Cally. "I've no objection to you risking your lives if you think it's worth it but not mine, the ship or Orac. What are you intending?" 

"You remember how you used Orac to find Servalan on Earth?"

Avon looked slightly pained at the reminder, Tarrant thought. Not surprising; that search had taken him to Anna and her death. "Assume that I do."

Could you program Orac to keep track of Servalan's whereabouts continuously?" 

He frowned at her. “I might be able to.” 

“If we can do that without her knowledge then we have a chance of tracking her out on one of her jaunts and laying an ambush.”

Avon thought about that for a moment. "Very well. On the strict understanding that you do nothing with that information without my agreement."

“Why should you get a veto?” Tarrant asked. "There are five of us. We could outvote you." 

“I'm the one programming Orac," Avon said, "and that's my condition. Take it or leave it. Just don't think you can go back on your word later."

“We won’t,” Cally said.

“Hang on. What if he’s completely unreasonable?” Tarrant asked. It didn’t seem unlikely.

“He won’t be. How long will it take you, Avon?”

“A few days. Access alone would be trivial but I presume you don’t want anyone to know that their security has been breached.”

Tarrant really didn’t think that entering into any sort of agreement with Avon should ever be done this lightly, but Cally seemed determined and Avon was already sweeping Orac up and striding off the flight deck.

 

The place was quiet without Avon around. No-one had seen more than a glimpse of him in the galley since he started work and he didn’t stop to eat with the rest of them, just taking food back to his quarters with him. Liberator herself was slicing through a quiet sector of the galaxy without any urgency or destination in mind, which gave her pilot yet more of nothing much to do. 

Tarrant played some poker with Vila and predictably lost a lot of notional credits. Dayna joined them for a while but the game didn’t much interest her. She wanted to do something, she said, by which Tarrant imagined that she meant that she wanted to shoot Federation troops. She seemed to have forgiven Tarrant for his failure to be as interested in her as he was in Avon, possibly because since he’d ended up alone she had been proved right about his stupidity. 

Tarrant drifted back to his room early, took a shower and settled down with a holoreader but he couldn’t get involved in the story. The romance seemed insipid and he wasn’t reluctant to put it aside when the knock came.

“Come in,” 

It was Avon, to his surprise. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” Avon stepped inside before Tarrant thought to invite him again. 

“Is the programming finished?”

“Not yet. I needed a break.” Avon took a turn around the room, glancing at Tarrant’s few possessions, then sat on the bed. He was wearing black silks and slippers.

Tarrant felt a warm glow of anticipation and an equally cold suspicion. Avon wouldn’t just turn up and fall into bed with him, would he? Life wasn’t ever that good. “Is this a change of heart?”

“It’s an intermission from thinking too much. I presumed from your rather pitiful plea for entertainment a couple of days ago that you would have no objection.”

“Pitiful it may have been but apparently it worked.” Tarrant was smiling now. There were all sorts of questions that he would be wise to ask before he went ahead with this, but sod them. He let the dressing gown that was the only thing he was wearing slide to the floor. Avon’s mouth met his with no reluctance at all as he pushed the man firmly back onto the bed and his hands delved under the smooth silk..

 

Nothing could possibly be as good ever as Avon underneath him, knees brushing against Tarrant’s hips, his normally chill gaze for once unfocussed in pleasure as Tarrant moved inside him. Since Tarrant couldn’t watch him and kiss him simultaneously he settled for locking his arms straight so that he looked down on the other man’s unguarded face as his own climax approached. He’d wanted this for so long... 

Avon’s eyes shifted to focus again, on him. “Next time,” he said between deep breaths, “you’re going to give me your safeword.”

“Tarrant grinned down at him. “Nice timing. Right now I’d promise you anything.”

Avon took another couple of breaths. “If sex turns your head that’s your look out.”

“Sex with you turns everything.”Tarrant said rather nonsensically. He dropped to his elbows for a long kiss then up again. feeling crazily happy. “Gods, Avon. Ask me for the bloody Earth and it’s yours, Go on. Ask.”

“Just your safeword.” Avon said. “If you’re feeling that generous I might ask for it now.”

That stopped Tarrant moving, frozen in acute distress. “Hell Avon. You can have it, of course. I just wanted to do this once with you without it, that’s all.” He stared down, still desperately close to orgasm, waiting. “Ask then.”

There was a long, acutely uncomfortable pause. Avon had a slight frown as if he were caught in a calculation that Tarrant felt he could for once have done as easily as Avon did. Tarrant didn’t get what he wanted, not without pain or control or some other form of cost. That was the way this relationship had always worked. Why should tonight be any different just because it mattered more to him?

“Next time,” Avon said. “Unless it’s the only way to make you move again, of course. Have you fallen asleep?”

Tarrant showed him just how energetic he could be for the forty seconds or so that he had left. After that he took great pleasure in demonstrating how spectacularly he could bring Avon off without the need for any orders or instructions or indeed any of the devices from the box that lived under Avon’s bed. 

Satiated, Tarrant dozed for a while as they lay together companionably enough just as they had done sometimes after Avon’s torments had ended in mutually satisfying sex. This time was different but Tarrant still wasn’t sure if it was prudent to say so. 

Eventually Avon spoke from where his head rested on Tarrant’s shoulder, his eyes on the ceiling. “Whatever it is you’re thinking at the moment is almost certainly wrong.”

“Nice try,” Tarrant said, “but the only thing in my head right now are questions, apart from “that was bloody amazing”, which I am definitely not wrong about. And I know better than to think you’d answer any of them.”

“Probably not,” Avon agreed. “Certainly not unless they are neither boring nor predictable.”

That excluded “why now?” presumably, along with “where is this going?” and Gods forbid “how do you feel about it?”. Tarrant went for something completely different. “What were the chances of your finesse working?”

“Extremely slight.” Avon said. His eyes had closed again and one hand roamed over Tarrant’s chest, puling a little at the hairs. 

“Was it a true finesse, though? Or did you had an alternative?” 

“Sell you all out and let Kivil have my ship? I still had that as an option if the Adrumb didn’t turn up. It was fortunate for all of us that they did.” 

“You’re a bad liar sometimes.” Tarrant slid a hand around Avon’s waist. The touch of the warm skin was turning him on again already. “If your finesse had failed you’d have sent the ship back to safety and found another chance to escape later.”

“I would be extremely reluctant to lose the ship,” Avon agreed. 

“Make it about Liberator if you like. But when you told Kivil you’d betray us I could see you watching me. What were you looking for?”

There was a pause and for a moment he thought he’d pushed Avon’s tolerance of being questioned too far. But a reply came.

“I was trying to assess how convincing a story I was telling.”

“And what did you see in my face?” Tarrant asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? No moment of betrayal, no flicker of doubt?”

“Your point being?” 

“That we’re past all that. I’m past all that, anyway. It doesn’t matter how good your story is any more, I see through it. Of all the many times I was sure that you'd let me down, not one of them turned out that way. I trust you implicitly.” 

Avon moved fast, up and heavy across Tarrant’s thighs, hands on his wrists. “Safeword,” he demanded.

“Roj Blake.”

Pain exploded across his cheek from the man’s knuckles. “Still complacent?” Avon asked, his voice cold.

“I didn’t say complacent!” Tarrant snapped back. He knew from experience that struggling free from underneath would be difficult so for the moment he didn’t try. He also knew that two words would get him out of it but he was saving those for when he wanted to make that point. “Give ms some credit for knowing you by now! I don’t think you’re nice, or harmless, or good for me or even particularly sane. I just know what you won’t do, and it’s a pretty small list.” 

Avon’s scowl didn’t fade as his nails dug into Tarrant’s wrists. There was something still wrong, Tarrant thought and then he knew, of course, what it was.

“I’m not building myself a house of cards here, Avon. I know there’s no reason for you to come knocking at my door again when your room is so much better fitted out for your preferences. Once was once, nothing else. You’re welcome to come back but you’re not expected. Now an invitation to your place every now and then- that’s more along the lines of what I’m hoping for.” 

The scowl faded as Avon considered him. “You’re less naive than you used to be,” the man said finally, releasing his wrists and rolling back down by his side.

“Yes, I suspect that I rather enjoyed being naive. Never mind. Last question, I promise- why now?”

Avon was staring at the ceiling again. “This reprogramming of Orac- it’s the first step toward Liberator re-enlisting in Blake’s war.”

“I thought you weren’t going to let yourself or the ship get involved in anything dangerous?”

Avon shrugged. “I can try,” he said, “But if Cally and Dayna get themselves in trouble, will you stay safe on the ship?”

“Not a chance,” Tarrant assured him.

“Well then. Beside, there’s no real neutrality to be found. Servalan wants us dead and Liberator hers.” 

“So we’re going to war,” Tarrant said. “And this is what, a soldier’s last fling?”

Avon snorted. “Give it time enough and you’ll still end up discovering that you’re making a bad mistake but I doubt if we’re both going to be around long enough for it to matter.”

“I don’t intend to let either of us get killed, but if imminent death makes you horny, by all means keep contemplating it.” 

Avon propped himself up a little. “Now you mention it, since I've got your safe word I might as well do something with it. I knew that I should have brought a pair of cuffs with me. I don't expect you've got any lying around?”

“Sorry. I'm all out of restraints right now. All my other sadistic sexual partners always remember to bring their own. You’ll just have to use your imagination.”

“That,” Avon said, “is the smugness of a man who's overlooked something important.” 

“And what might that be?” 

“This.” Avon reached down to the floor beside the bed and came up with something in his hand. 

 

The dressing gown cord made a fairly token restraint and when Avon had Tarrant face down and exactly where he wanted him he did nothing more terrible than screw him slowly, thoroughly and to their obvious mutual satisfaction. Between that and untying him Avon told him exactly how, when and how hard he was going to come and Tarrant writhed under his hands and tried without success to prove him even a little wrong. 

It had been, Tarrant thought as he watched Avon sleep again, as if the man had been merely determined to make his point after his earlier lapse in judgement. Tarrant had no objection, though he was secretly determined to ensure if possible that that there would be other lapses occasionally. He could build a very small house of cards if he liked just as long as Avon didn’t catch a glimpse of it. 

There was a tiny streak of silver skin across Avon’s chest, the last remaining mark from the Adrumb. Tarrant ran a finger along it, gently enough not to wake the man, noticing with satisfaction as he did it the faint red mark around his own wrist. This and the chance to really go after the Feds at last would most definitely keep him entertained. 

Tarrant saw no reason to agree with Avon’s pessimistic assessment of either their relationship or their chances of survival. Orac would track Servalan, Liberator would chase her down, they’d blow up her ship, the Feds would reel from the assassination, their allies would rise to the opportunity and the five of them would lead the fight against Earth with Liberator as the flagship of the glorious revolution. They’d need a military-trained general, of course, to direct the war; how fortunate for Liberator that he’d joined them. Tarrant, grinned to himself, aware that there was more than one house of cards going up in his mind but then he had always been particularly good at balancing things. There was nothing wrong with being optimistic, though he doubted that he’d ever persuade Avon of that. He lay down again beside the warm, solid body and fell comfortably and happily asleep.


End file.
